Category Archives: Korean

I envision these reviews as a friend talking to another friend about restaurant recommendations. If someone asks you where to go, you don’t lead off and talk about all the bad places. You wanna talk about the best places! So first and foremost, my job is to tell you about all the best places to eat in town and, from time to time, to tell you about why I think the places that everyone else love really aren’t that worthy of praise.

These are some of my favorite restaurants serving Korean food in Las Vegas.

Note: I am on a bit of a Mexican food kick recently. Is this a problem? No? I thought so.

Fusion food gets a bad rap. Well, good fusion food does. Bad fusion food can go right to the garbage where it belongs. I’m no expert on what makes Asian food authentic, but I know a good version of food when I see it. Changing something just so you can say you changed it doesn’t make the food good or the ingredients cohesive. The flavors still have to work well and you can’t jack up the price just because you put kimchi on a burger. For those of you who want a menu full of delicious and familiar food options that are still new to you, welcome home to Komex.

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Komex is a super bare bones restaurant that looks like it might have opened a week ago. It has a home cooking look and taste to it (in a good way) that is very hard to replicate. You may get some less than homemade ingredients, but in a way… what could be more home cooking than that? The savings are completely passed on to the customer, however, and this may be your cheapest meal in town during your visit.

It’s worth noting that fivethirtyeight.com did a bracket of the best burritos in the USA and included Komex in the competition.

BOOM FREE APPETIZER WITH THE MENUS.

I’m adequate!

Chips and salsa, the easy way. Can’t complain here.

The menu is set up in a way that has all your classic Korean, Mexican and American food with fusion twists to them. The specials menu is where a lot of the best stuff is, so make sure you check it out in addition to the staples. This was a quick lunch with a friend, so we ordered a few things to share and a few to ourselves.

Value incarnate.

It’s hard not to order the fried wontons. They’re nothing mindblowing and pretty basic, but at $1.50 for a plate of 5 they’re pretty much the cheapest appetizer you can get in any restaurant in town. Hell, a restaurant I went to today charges $3 for a fried egg. ONE EGG. It’s cheap sweet and sour sauce served with them, but who cares. Nom.

MOAR TACOS

Bulgogi tacos are a thing and they have been sadly lacking in my world. $2 a taco is a very fair price for such a thing that makes my life more than $2 worth of happy, and the bulgogi marinade goes extremely well with the salsas and toppings on the taco. I also recommend the pork belly tacos, which are not even really fusion because everyone eats pork belly because IT’S AWESOME.

EXHIBIT A FOR AWESOME

One of the specials I received word on was the PBBBLT which is a pork belly, bulgogi, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Bacon is technically pork belly already, but you know what? I didn’t think of that at the time because I was too busy stuffing my face. I attacked this thing like a starving man. The toothpicks were almost ingested. Yes, that’s toasted wonderbread and iceberg lettuce, two of the worst atrocities that have no business in a restaurant. No, I don’t care. Sometimes a sandwich just hits every nerve in your being and tells you that everything’s going to be okay. And if it isn’t, GUESS WHAT, WAFFLE FRIES. Of the sweet potato variety. It’s like a hug from grandma, only grandma didn’t have spicy mayo on the side. (thanks for nothing, grandma)

This was basically the best possible version of a club sandwich and I totally recommend trying it on your visit (if it’s still on the specials).

All the above food was “the most expensive meal ever eaten at this restaurant” and we got out for $20 a person. This should be in any local’s rotation and worth a trip from the strip for lunch.

It’s usually good news when you have to wait half an hour to get seated at 11 PM on a weekday. This is one of those cases.

Tofu Hut is an amazing value Korean BBQ place just west of the strip on the edge of what I call Asiatown. There are a ton of Korean BBQ places but few of them are cheap and some of them have not great quality food. Tofu Hut somehow has both of those things.

BUT NOT TOFU LOL

They stop seating just after 1 AM but they’re open 7 days a week. So if you feel like gorging yourself around midnight this is one of the better places to go. They have a sign-in sheet in the waiting area that is usually 4-5 groups deep since they have a limited number of cooking tables inside, but trust me: It’s worth it.

We get seated, give a few selections off of their menu and a flurry of appetizers arrive. Kimchi, pickles, potato pancake, fishcakes, noodles and a few others which are delicious though unidentifiable to my caucasian brain. All of them are solid and sate my intense hunger until the meat actually arrives.

Well that was delicious, check please!

A salad is also always brought out and honestly it’s one of the better simple salads I’ve ever had. A very light and tasty vinaigrette over tiny shreds of lettuce. Definitely nice with the fatty and spicy meat and sauce to come.

One thing that makes this place really separate from the other Korean BBQ places (other than the price) is the quality of their short ribs. Typically korean short ribs (kalbi) are not a great cut of meat with little bones with lots of gristle on them. This place serves you basically a big piece of steak instead and it’s definitely the best kalbi I can remember having. Any carnivore would approve. We also ordered marinated sliced pork, a steamed egg (weird name for a great dish, definitely order it), and marinated sliced ribeye.

The unholy triumvirate (plus salad).

The actual cooking is up to you and though I don’t have a problem with that I’m sure some will. This is pretty typical for a Korean BBQ place and helps keep the price down, though to be honest I wouldn’t want them cooking it here because the biggest problem with this place is that the service is seriously lacking. Drink refills, food orders, and table cleanups happen pretty slowly and it probably contributes to it taking so long to get a table. But at a certain point, the food is so good– I DON’T CARE GIVE ME THE TONGS.

Probably worth mentioning that this place is all you can eat. Yeah.

Imagine this picture 6 times in a row and that’s basically what this meal was like.

Tofu Hut has a pointless name and not great service but is definitely a mainstay in my evening eating. It’s definitely one of the more crave-able late night meals in town and is so insanely cheap at $20 per person after tax and tip that you can justify going a few times a week. Just make sure you’re prepared for a short wait to do so.